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A documentary on the once-promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, and the friendship/rivalry between their respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor. Full summary » | Add synopsis »

A documentary about two rocks bands, spanning a number of years. Brian
Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. What makes it special is the
examination of the complex contrasting personalities and the ironies of
success and failure.

Anton Newcombe, the main man of Brian Jonestown Massacre, is widely
recognised as a musical genius not only by his colleagues, his friends
and rivals the Dandy Warhols, but also by record producers and most
people who have worked with him. Sadly he and his band members are also
incapable of integrating with the real world. Newcombe picks fights
with band members on stage or with members of the audience (getting
arrested at one point for literally kicking in the head of a fan).
Newcombe knows no limits  he plays between 40 and 100 different
instruments, writes and produces all BJM's music, can produce enough
songs to fill a whole album in a single day, has a prophet-like
obsessiveness with his own musical genius, but is also a heavy drugs
user, flies into rages at the slightest compromise of his own artistic
integrity, orders his band members about as if they are lower forms of
life, and can blow deals as fast as he makes them. BJM go through a
large number of record labels in fast succession  they sign them up as
soon as they realise Newcombe's talents and let them go as soon as they
realise he is totally uncontrollable.

The Warhols acknowledge their debt to Newcombe's creativity and don't
even put themselves in the same exalted sphere of greatness  but the
Warhols have something that BJM don't  the ability to integrate their
talents with common sense, the real world, and their market  as a
mixing pot of talent (even if much of it is distilled from guru
Newcombe) and accessibility, they are the very definition of 'cool.'
DiG! follows the parallel careers of the two bands with increasing
poignancy. At one point, Newcombe pulls stunts designed to generate
publicity by sending apparent death threats and hate messages to the
Warhols (in a box containing live ammunition and insults like a bar of
soap 'to clean up their act')  only he forgets to tell them it's a
stunt and they get so paranoid they take out a restraining order
against Newcombe. By the time the Dandy Warhols take off in Europe with
hits like 'Every Day Should Be A Holiday' and 'Bohemian Like You',
Newcombe is becoming increasingly isolated. BJM are stopped and the
band breaks up when they are arrested for possession of marijuana  the
Warhols get busted for drugs around the same time, let off with a
warning, and even allowed to keep the grass.

The wider appeal of DiG! is that the lessons of genius versus
accessibility go way beyond two bands or even rock music. The downside
is that it is still a documentary, however intimate, and it will mostly
only appeal to dedicated film fans or people who are already interested
in the music of one or both of the featured bands. Newcombe may well be
a largely unrecognised genius, and there are feint glimpses of this in
the film, but to the unattuned ear there is little more than the
assertions of the people interviewed to attest to this. In the words of
one of the band members: "In every spiritual tradition, you burn in
hell for pretending to be God and not being able to back it up."
Newcombe isn't pretending  but numerically there are maybe still
insufficient people to appreciate him in his own lifetime, and DiG! has
an uphill struggle to rectify the balance in favour of a tortured but
largely unrecognised genius.

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